“Synthetic genes injected into billions of humans would form a grand experiment to create an altered species.”
To my mind it is of the utmost importance that people are being stopped from experimenting like this with our lives!
“Synthetic genes injected into billions of humans would form a grand experiment to create an altered species.”
To my mind it is of the utmost importance that people are being stopped from experimenting like this with our lives!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Tempest
Kate Tempest
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kate Tempest
Born Kate Esther Calvert[1]
22 December 1985 (age 30)
Brockley, South East London, England
Occupation Poet, playwright, rapper, recording artist
Notable work Hopelessly Devoted, Wasted, Brand New Ancients, Everybody Down, Hold Your Own
Website katetempest.co.uk
Musical career
Genres Spoken word, hip-hop
Instruments Vocals
Labels Big Dada, Ninja Tune
Kate Tempest (born Kate Esther Calvert, 22 December 1985) is an English poet, spoken word artist and playwright. In 2013 she won the Ted Hughes Award for her work Brand New Ancients.[2] In 2015-16, she was a visiting fellow in the Department of English, University College, London.
Contents [hide]
1 Life and work
2 Reception
3 References
4 External links
Life and work[edit]
Tempest grew up in Brockley, South East London, one of five children. She describes growing up in “a shitty part of town, but in a nice house where there was always food”, and developing her work ethic by seeing her father go from working as a labourer, through night-school to becoming a criminal lawyer by the time she was eight years old.[3]
She enjoyed her primary school experience but was unhappy at secondary school. She cites her English teacher Mr Bradshaw as an encouraging influence who read her early poetry and gave her books to inspire her. She says she had a “wayward youth”, living in squats, “hanging around on picket lines rapping at riot cops”. She worked in a record shop from age 14 to 18. At 16 she studied at the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon and she went on to graduate in English Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London.[2]
She describes the London marches to call an end to the Iraq war as a point of disillusionment when she saw that the message of millions of people did not change the direction of the war.[3][4][5][6]
Tempest first performed when she was 16, at open mic nights at Deal Real, a small hip hop store on Carnaby Street in London’s West End. She went on to support acts such as John Cooper Clarke, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah and Scroobius Pip. She toured Europe, Australia and America with her band ‘Sound of Rum’ and worked with organisations such as Yale University, the BBC, Apples and Snakes, The Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Tempest has performed at venues such as Glastonbury, Latitude, The Wandering Word tent at Shambala, The Big Chill and the Nu-Yorican poetry café, where she won two poetry slams. Her first poetry book was Everything Speaks in its Own Way, followed by her first work of theatre, Wasted. At 26, she launched the theatrical spoken word piece Brand New Ancients at the Battersea Arts Centre (2012), to great critical acclaim.[3][4][5][7] The piece also won Tempest the 2013 Off West End Award (“The Offies”) for “Best TBC Production”. Tempest’s influences include, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, W B Yeats, William Blake, W H Auden and Wu-Tang Clan.[4][5][8]At the Barbican launch of ‘The Bricks that Build the Houses’, Tempest explained how many people thought of Virginia Woolf when reading her work but she had never actually read much Woolf. Tempest also explained how all writers and artists are using the same material, the bubbling content of humanity, and that this causes continuities between writers, even those that have not read one another.
In 2014 she released the album Everybody Down (Big Dada), which was produced by Dan Carey and was nominated for the 2014 Mercury Prize.[9] In January 2015 the album was given the inaugural “Soundcheck Award” for the best album of 2014 by Radioeins and Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin.
Reception[edit]
The Economist said of Tempest’s commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company: “A stunning piece by Kate Tempest, a London-born performance poet, comes bursting off the screen. Rarely has the relevance of Shakespeare to our language, to the very fabric of our feelings, been expressed with quite such youthful passion. (It should be mandatory viewing for all teenagers.)”[10] The Huffington Post describes her as “Britain’s leading young poet, playwright and rapper…one of the most widely respected performers in the country – the complete package of lyrics and delivery. She is also one of the most exciting young writers working in Britain today.” (2012)[3] The Guardian commented of Brand New Ancients, “Suddenly it feels as if we are not in a theatre but a church… gathered around a hearth, hearing the age-old stories that help us make sense of our lives. We’re given the sense that what we are watching is something sacred.”[11] In 2013 the newspaper noted:
She is one of the brightest talents around. Her spoken-word performances have the metre and craft of traditional poetry, the kinetic agitation of hip-hop and the intimacy of a whispered heart-to-heart… Tempest deals bravely with poverty, class and consumerism. She does so in a way that not only avoids the pitfalls of sounding trite, but manages to be beautiful too, drawing on ancient mythology and sermonic cadence to tell stories of the everyday.[12]
In 2013 she won the Ted Hughes Award for her work Brand New Ancients.,[2] and was selected as one of the 2014 Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Society.
By Christian Marx Over the past three decades, the political and sociological narrative has become narrower than ever. Sensible social policies are now trumpeted as “dangerously communist”. The most basic social systems are labelled “hand outs for bludgers”. The Murdoch press is a hateful echo chamber for the intellectually stunted and the shallow thinkers. It……

Today we went to the German Club for lunch. Since Peter’s birthday is tomorrow, which is a working day in Australia, we celebrated with the family already today. Peter took some photos of some of the family. We were a dozen people and had booked a table for our lunch. Every one was very happy with their Mittagessen, meaning we could all order whatever we liked. There was some dance music from the 1950s that Peter and I liked very much. We even had a little dance! Lucas and Alex, our great-grandchildren, enjoyed themselves too. It is great that children are so welcome at this club.

Many months ago we booked our trip. It is exciting that our departure time is getting very close: We’re going to leave for Berlin on Friday, the 3rd of June. So, only three more weeks to go!
Today, Peter, Caroline and I are going to Wollongong. I have an appointment with Dr. Pearson for 9 o’clock. Friday mornings there are always markets in Wollongong. We plan to go to these markets after I’ve seen my doctor. We might be able to buy some fresh vegetables at the markets. In the afternoon I meet my lady friends for our games of Scrabble and Rummy Cub.
On this coming Sunday we’re going to meet the family for Peter’s birthday lunch, and on Monday Peter takes our old car to Warrawong to get it inspected for re-newel of registration. Caroline and I want to go with him to Warrawong to visit a nice cafe there where we’ve been before.
It seems we are busy all the time. I am sure the next three weeks will be gone in a flash. And then it is going to be only four more weeks and we will be back in Australia. We arrive back on the Saturday, the 2nd of July, which is going to be Election Day in Australia!
We talked to Peter’s sister Ilse the other day. She reckons for our family re-union we are going to be some 25 people! We also talked to my brother Peter Uwe recently. He wants to come to Berlin to see all of us. But we can also visit him and Astrid at their place in the country.
“. . . . a choice we should never have to make.” To my mind
this is exactly right.
The phrase, Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite, frequently attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville but in fact coined by French counterrevolutionary Joseph de Maistre, is translated as “Every democracy gets the government it deserves.”
It’s not a sentiment with which I entirely agree: many factors are at work in a liberal democracy such as ours that bring into question the core assumption of informed choice, not least of which is propaganda distributed by media with vested interests, and its collusion with political and financial elites. This piece in Alternet makes interesting arguments against de Maistre’s maxim, describing it as a toxic idea that needs to be laid to rest. It’s worth a read.
I’ve listened carefully to all the pragmatic arguments of ALP supporters, as I have for the last seven years. I know that in almost every way an ALP government is far preferable to…
View original post 675 more words
https://auntyuta.com/2016/04/12/utas-diary-tuesday-12th-april-2016/#comments
The last entry in my Dairy was exactly one month ago! Time flies . . . .
At my age time flies more and more.
On the 14th of April I published some comments to a blog by John Lord and Catterel wrote a comment to what I had said on that day:
auntyuta.com/2016/04/14/on-july-25-2014-john-lord-published-a-post-about-whether-grammar-matters/
I said: Finally I’d like to make a comment on the subject. I did not finish high-school and have never been to university. English is my second language. I have been blogging since July 2011. I very much enjoy the contact with other bloggers. I am aware that university educated people do find that there is a lot wrong with the way I write. I know that my daughters as well as my son may point to quite a few errors in any of my writing that I have published.
Here is what Catterel wrote:
“Dear Uta, as long as you communicate honestly and clearly, especially in a language that isn’t your mother tongue, all is forgiven! I’ve seen too many students traumatised into silence by over-critical teachers who leapt on every tiny error and destroyed the learner’s confidence. Yes, grammar matters of course, otherwise we’d be mutually incomprehensible, but it’s only one aspect of a language and like all living things, it evolves.”
Here is a bit of what I wrote on the 15th of April:
auntyuta.com/2016/04/15/how-did-world-war-two-affect-us/
I wonder, how many people, alive today, have never been affected by war? Wars continue to be fought in a lot of countries and a lot of continents. The refugee crisis is now worse than ever. Is mankind going backwards? The few people, who are not affected by wars, do they not ever consider how wars affect the rest of humanity? For as long as some of us can live in peace, we do not care what is being done to the rest of humanity? How can we be so selfish? Has it just got to do with a survival wish?
On the 17th of April Gerard Oostermann wrote the following reply to a Reblog I published on that day:
“There is a lot there, Uta. I think there is so much more in living with someone that many just choose to totally ignore. The ultimate banana skin is what in the west we call ‘love’. Many get blinded by that, especially romantic love, and this is just a cruel trick of nature. As soon as someone says: ‘I truly love you,’ run away as fast as you can. It is so often doomed to fail. When ‘love’ enters, we start to project the most outlandish, wonderful but totally unrealistic qualities onto the person of our affections.
A good friendship, care, consideration and mutual respect might well be the much better and more solid ingredients of love.”
I replied: I very much like your insightful comment, dear Gerard. They say hate and love can be very close together. I suspect that my parents had a love/hate relationship. They probably would have projected the most “outlandish unrealistic qualities” onto each other! And I reckon respect is absolutely essential for a lasting and mutual beneficial love relationship. And of course without friendship, care and consideration you cannot live together in a satisfactory way.
My re-published reflections about my parents you can find here:
auntyuta.com/2016/04/16/reflections-about-war-reflections-about-my-parents/
The following days during last month I just did some reblogging of different authors’ blogs that I found very interesting. After the 20th of April I did no more blogging for quite a while. For weeks I did not even touch the computer to do some reading. I read instead Jonathan Franzen’s Novel FREEDOM which I had acquired at a very reduced price. I thought, reading this novel was extremely well spent time! I actually had a few health problems which caused me not to want to sit at the computer . . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr9dB2Xf9e8&list=RDJr9dB2Xf9e8#t=23
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr9dB2Xf9e8
An ARTICLE called “The truth about my father” you can find in Google.
Duncan Storrar became famous after last Monday’s Q & A program. I think what Duncan’s twenty year old son says about his father makes an interesting background story. Duncan seems to suffer from debilitating anxiety attacks. To speak his mind on Q & A was extremely brave of him!